There exists a variety of In Building Systems (IBS) for deployment of antennas in an indoor environment, e.g. in a building. A Distributed Antenna System (DAS) has been the most common solution, wherein a number of antenna end points (also denoted antenna points) are distributed within the indoor environment. The antenna points are all connected to a central point, which for instance may comprise a network node, such as a base station of a radio access network. The antenna points provide user terminals with wireless services within an indoor coverage area (also denoted cell).
When deploying the DAS, it is done with a goal of maximizing the coverage of each antenna point. However, after deployment it is difficult to get feedback on whether or not the deployment was successful. For instance, an unnecessarily high number of antenna points may have been installed, the antenna points may have been installed at non-optimal positions, or an insufficient number of antenna points may have been installed.
IBS solutions are sometimes low cost, including low cost planning and installation. There is no time for detailed propagation prediction and planning. Antenna positions may then typically be decided based on some rules of thumb, e.g. assuming a certain antenna point to cover a certain area.
Existing IBS planning tools are not very accurate regarding propagation prediction. Also, in order to get good predictions on signal propagation, detailed input on wall-material, obstacles and other issues relevant for the signal propagation are required. Such detailed input may not be obtained easily. In addition, the spatial distribution of the wireless traffic within a building can be difficult to predict, e.g. whether there are “hot spots” where many users seek wireless services. Such spatial traffic distribution may also change in dependence on building usage, e.g. due to a new business occupant having a different need and use of wireless services than a previous business occupant. The spatial traffic distribution may even change at organization changes of existing business within the building.
If a key performance indicator (KPI), such as cell KPIs or customer complaints, calls for a reconfiguration of a cell, the KPIs do not give much insight on how to add or move the antenna points in order to improve the performance. Typically, either trial and error is relied on using the same method as used at the initial installation or else a more costly investigation effort is needed.
When a cell split is required, e.g. in order to enable reuse of communication resources within the wireless network, it can be difficult to determine an antenna point allocation that would give a balanced load between the newly created cells.
From the above it is realized that there is a need for improvements in view of efficiency of deployments of DAS.